"Promise. Don't misunderstand me-you are quite vexing." He touches his tender jaw. "And you hit like a man. But you didn't cause his illness. That is his doing."

And now I understand that truth casts a spell of its own, one I'm not sure of how to hold on to, though I'm desperate to try.

I feel like I swallowed a Magritte. Like on the inside, I'm made of clouds and floating eyes, green apples, and slowly rising men in bowler hats.

I think about dying every day, because I can't stop thinking about living.

She was tired of being told how it was by this generation, who’d botched things so badly. They’d sold their children a pack of lies: God and country. Love your parents. All is fair. And then they’d sent those boys, her brother, off to fight a great monster of a war that maimed and killed and destroyed whatever was inside them. Still they lied, expecting her to mouth the words and play along. Well, she wouldn’t. She knew now that the world was a long way from fair. She knew the monsters were real.

Ain't that a sight? With all the things we know and learn, we still ain't touched the big mysteries -- where we come from, where we go next, why we even her. And when something truly miraculous happens, we run and hide in our caves. We deny.

What happened to the winner" Adina asked. "She tripped." "And the first runner-up?" Miss Michigan cracked her knuckles. "She tripped, too.